You may wonder why on earth I have Volume 6 part 5, which he didn’t write, rather than anything at or before volume 6 part 3, which he did write.

The answer is quite simple.  The title of volume 6 part 5 is as follows: Biochemical technology: Fermentation and Food Science.  You will note that pages 149 through 291 are about alcoholic beverages, and 7 of those pages are specifically about beer. Needham did do some proofing and editorial work on this volume before he passed away in 1995.  I look forward to giving some of this information a read tonight while sipping on some Southern Tier Barleywine.

 i’m sorry ehawk, but you cannot time travel: “all, married Englishman was a freethinking intellectual, who practiced nudism and was devoted to a quirky brand of folk dancing.” and a biochemist to boot!

So true, so true, but books can serve as a sort of escapism, even when they’re non-fiction. Besides, I’m not into nudism.

Anyhow, this was a truly fun exercise, and I added a subtitle to the whole thing as well.

My next musical task is to dissect some music i have heard before to recreate.  Reverse engineering, musical style.  I also need to find out the summer hours for the piano practice rooms, because if I’m actually going to accomplish what I want to I need to be able to play the piano again.

My other coursework has been music theory and composition, which has been absolutely awesome and eye opening. I love the class, the prof and TA are excellent, and it’s just a ton of fun. Some of the composition assignments were a little daunting, but we got so much encouragement that it was hard to feel like anything was “wrong” in class. It’s also the most grade-absent class I’ve had here thus far (and these two are my 12th and 13th classes thus far).

Anyhow, last night was spent finishing up my final composition to hand in this evening. It was a bit intimidating, and I know there are a few notation errors in the sheet music which I will try to fix before class this evening (always show beats 1 and 3 in 4/4 music is the chief one that i violate on the first line). Really, check out the sheet music (i already did the edits, so let me know if you see any terrible errors). I will likely try to expand on this piece in the future, but for the time being I have precisely one minute and forty one seconds of creativity. If you don’t mind midi sound output, you can listen to Rainy Chinatown Ride.

Here’s my relationship to the piece: i once got into district regional chorus, which was awesome and crazy and competitive and we had this awesome nutjob of a director who kicked our asses for many consecutive hours of rehersal before a one off performance. It’s probably the most challenging and horrifying music experience of my life because it was a lot of sight reading and really challenging on people’s ranges, and it was all non-easy choral work except for the star spangled banner.

That concert that day was awesome, it was the first time i ever heard Stolen Moments (Oliver Nelson) and the first time i ever got into jazz (what can i say, through my parents all i had was a litany of musicals and Barbara Streisand behind me). Awesome.

One of the pieces we performed was The Promise of Living from the Tender Land… we hated it. the accompaniment sounded nothing like any of the 5 completely different vocal parts, and while sometimes the vocals went together, it was almost impossible to peg what part of the creepy piano accompaniment anything was supposed to go. Meanwhile the director kept telling us we sucked hardcore. So much so that we had to do this self-critique exercise… to this day nothing is as scary as that experience. No one liked the piece… when we had a moment to ourselves we all badmouthed the piece. it was the only one people felt really shaky about.

a month later when i heard a recording of the piece…. i cried like a baby. I’ve heard other recordings here and there, but I am totally psyched for an opportunity to see this in concert. Very excited… so excited i’m taking time out of finishing my book and finishing a composition piece to go see this thing.

I’m including a piece from NJ state choir from 2003. Hooray for Youtube.

Anyhow… at home I use Amarok.  It makes me happy, and its happy with Ubuntu, which i have running on both machines. At work I am a slave to the windows, and while they started running it on windows, i’ve yet to really get behind that.  I want light, i want something that is not taxing my resources. Instead I pulled foobar 2000, and it’s adorable and has a little alien icon… really that along with a super simple but functional display that i can skin in black makes me happy.  Add to that some Doppler action for managing podcasts, and you have a happy happy eHawk.  Unfortunately This American Life still doesn’t like downloading appropriately, but that’s fine… i can listen to it live online with little frustration.

Today I actually went and tweaked the equalizer settings for a music playlist, and it amazed me how high quality sound output makes music incredible, tear inducing excellent.  I love music, i love totally filling my head with music.  It’s delicious. It also drowns out the pounding of walls from construction here at work.

In case you’re wondering what’s playing right now?  Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Relax, oh yeah. By the way, in that video the guy in the mustache and little cap cracks me up.

It’s stupid, and funny, and awesome.

I mounted a wire on the back of bunny boogie and dropped it off at the somerville museum for the artist’s choice show for somerville open studios. Some time was devoted to getting a plan together for my final book project for my book art class. I need to devote some time to building a mock-up.

The other thing i did this weekend was work on a firefly themed design, and i absolutely love the way the whole thing came out. I’m hoping the folks who received it find it useful. I thought i’d share a lower res version of the basic design so that i can show that i didn’t totally waste my time this weekend. I also managed to almost finish up sewing 2 little stuffed critters, and i got some paint down on one painting. Not as much as I’d like to have gotten done, but such is life.